


He Calls Himself A Man

by Imaginesurrender



Series: kept to themselves so secret and so close [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character death (ish), Gen, Team Free Will 2.0
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imaginesurrender/pseuds/Imaginesurrender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, Jesse Turner's Fall From Humanity. </p>
<p>A wendigo, a hotel room, and Team Free Will 2.0. You can imagine how well it turns out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Calls Himself A Man

They're hunting a wendigo in Paris and they've just figured out its lair when it comes tearing through the front door, straight at Claire. Jesse hears a sickening tear, a scream cut short - and then he's bursting into action with Ben. The wendigo flies backwards, slamming into a dresser with the sound of bones breaking. Ben grabs a flare gun from the bed. Aims, fires. The wendigo goes up in flames. Jesse keeps the fire concentrated inwards, the monster's internal organs burning away to ash in seconds. It crumples to the floor. Dead.

Claire's lying in a pool of blood when Jesse looks at her. It's steadily growing, seeping from her body and stealing over the carpet. Ben's crouched beside her, gabbling with an intensity only Ben can manage. "Come on Claire, wake up, please, wake up, get up, move-" But her chest isn't moving. She isn't blinking. Her face is white. She's so still and pale and lifeless that all Jesse can think is  _deaddeaddead_.

Ben inhales sharply, looking over at Jesse. Jesse is suddenly filled with a fear that creeps up him, starting in his knees and flowing over his thighs, his stomach, his chest until it reaches his throat. He swallows. There's something about Ben's eyes - something blank, something  _flat_  - that Jesse has seen before.

That time in Arizona when they had been just too late to save the man from that White Woman. His wife had looked at the three of them like that.

"You killed her." Ben's voice is emotionless.

"I- Ben, what are you talking about? It was the wendigo, you saw-"

"You did. Her heart was beating and then it- then it wasn't." He chokes for a second, blinks, glances down at Claire. "You thought she was dead. You- you killed her."

"No." Jesse's mouth has gone dry. He didn't, he  _couldn't_ have - his powers don't work like that, the only time they did was when he met the Winchesters. When he was a child. But something's whispering that perhaps it could have, perhaps it was his fault-

He's moving before he knows what happens. He's out the door, sprinting down the stairwell before Ben's even left the hotel room. He's on the street, a crossroads- of course! A crossroads. His mad dash from the hotel room suddenly makes sense.

His father.

Jesse doesn't think of his parents much. Why would he, when one was a demon who possessed the other? A person could go mad thinking about it. He has looked into his father a little, though. Enough to know he was a crossroads demon who went rogue. Enough to know how to summon him.

The hole is dug in an instant; a box appears in his hand. A quick rattle assures him everything he needs is in there. He puts it down quickly, covers it. His powers are changing faster than they ever have before, but the desperation cloaking Jesse's mind stops him from caring. He  _needs_  Claire back, just like he needs Ben to not hate him and he needs to hunt to make up for this tainted blood he has.

He steps back, glances around. No-one. But…it should have worked. It  _had_ to have worked. Jesse looks down at his hands - they're shaking, quivering, as if he'd done crack.

Something changes, almost imperceptibly. Jesse looks up - and there he is. His father. Of course, he's wearing a woman. He always is. But Jesse can see past the meat suit, see his father's face. It's not a pretty sight.

"Bring her back." Jesse's voice is shaking almost as badly as his hands. His father smiles. It promises pain and suffering if the deal goes through but Jesse  _doesn't care_.

"No hello for your old man?" he drawls, confident and cocksure. Jesse couldn't hate him any more if he tried.

"Bring her back. Now." Jesse can hear his voice getting stronger. His father stops smiling.

"And if I don't?" He was nervous, now. He knew what Jesse could do.

"I won't send you back to Hell - not when you could worm your way out. I'll kill you." His father's host's face tightens for a second.

"You wouldn't."

"I would."  _I hate you enough, damnit._

"You don't have the power. You're not strong enough."

A wave of anger and hatred bubbles up inside Jesse -  _oh, so I can hate him more, then,_  he thinks - and he lifts his arm. Pulling it through the air feels like he's dragging it through treacle. He can  _feel_ the power rolling off him, filling the air with the scent of blood and sweat. This is him at his most powerful. This is the moment he could destroy all the angels in Heaven. Oh, he heard the angel say that. He knew how powerful he could be - but he'd never been this powerful before, ever. This was his maximum and his potential; this was his moment of power, of glory.

_You could destroy all the demons in Hell if you want_ , a voice whispers in his ear. Jesse snarls slightly. He doesn't  _want_ to destroy all the demons, he just wants to destroy this one - this puny bug who has belittled him and made him fear, who fathered him on a woman who wasn't willing, who made him the  _thing_  he is now.

Jesse is no longer human. He never was, really. Oh, he tried and he pretended - and he pretended well. He'd convinced Ben and Claire, and he'd almost convinced himself. He'd fought to never use anything more than his teleportation and telekinesis, fought with himself to always appear human. But he never truly was. He was as human as an angel, as a djinn. He was  _other_.

He could feel Ben turn the corner, feel it in his marrow and in his blood, just as he could feel every other person in the city. He could feel his father's fear, feel it settling around him like a cloak, knowing he could change it to anger, to hatred, to love in an instant.

All it would take was a thought.

_If this would take a thought, what would bringing Claire back take? A breath?_

The thoughts swims through his mind, through the honey-like thickness his power has brought to his brain. Everything is slow, gloopy - or he's quick and nimble, sliding down threads of ideas like a spider on a web or a free runner in a city, impossibly agile and moving faster than he ever has before.

"Jesse!" Ben's shouting but the words are impossibly stretched out, making them impossible to understand. He thinks he hears his name, but he's not sure and he doesn't care. He's just a human. He's hunts others - others like  _him_ , Jesse realises with a start. He leaps down this idea, following it to the inevitable conclusion: Ben would hunt him. Ben would kill him.

He disappears in an instant, father forgotten. All that is running through his head is  _getoutgetoutgetoutgetaway_ , all his nimbleness of the previous seconds abandoned for the insatiable need to survive.

He's in the hotel room and his things are flying into his bag - he doesn't need them but he wants them because, underneath everything, he's still half human. He turns to grab a gun from the bedside table but he sees the body on the floor, the empty shell of Claire. His power races ahead of him, reaching out with a golden thread that dives into the hole her soul left and  _pulling_.

Claire comes back coughing and shouting, her arms flailing around her head. She's still in a pool of blood but she's whole and she's healthy and she's  _there_.

Jesse disappears, his power barely diminished. His heart only hurts slightly to leave the boy and girl he loved like a family behind. But the pain is buried deep underneath the need to go, to get out, to run and hide and live somewhere Ben could never find him. To find somewhere safe.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2010 or so, when I was hugely into the Next Gen side of every fandom I was in, Harry Potter and Supernatural and all the rest. When I wrote it I wanted to turn it into a 'verse, and reading it now I am thinking of ways to write around it.   
> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, and comments will always be responded to :)


End file.
